Afterburn
by Dipenates
Summary: When Dick finally hits rock bottom, he comes to the Neptune Grand. To Logan. Episode tag/missing scene for 3.1: Welcome Wagon. Includes some dialogue by Rob Thomas. Warning: canon child abuse / suicide is discussed.


"I don't have anywhere else to go."

Dick was standing on his doorstep, disheveled, snotty and bleeding, and it was the most honest thing that Logan had ever heard him say.

"It's alright." He pulled the door wider. "I mean, you can stay here."

Dick looked away and started to cry, and Logan felt it like a punch in the stomach, because he'd seen Dick be bored and funny and spiteful and horny, but never sad. Never completely fucking bereft.

That night at the Neptune Grand he'd been with Veronica, who had flashed from weeping to resolve while _He raped me _echoed in Logan's head like a scream; and then Veronica and Mac, who hunched her shoulders when he looked at her for longer than a second; and then after they'd taken Mac home, Veronica had lain across his knees like Christ taken down from the cross. He'd barely given a thought that night to what Dick would be feeling about his brother splattered across the sidewalk, but he'd thought about nothing else since Dick flipped him off on campus.

And now Dick was standing in the hallway of the Neptune Grand, below the roof that his brother had stepped off as casually as if he was going for ice-cream. Crying like he didn't believe that anybody's door would be open for him ever again, and Logan couldn't leave him standing there alone.

Logan slid his arm across Dick's shoulders and rested his hand against Dick's neck.

"I messed up bad." Logan could smell the saltwater stink on his clothes and the liquor on his breath. Tequila, and beer, and maybe that was some cheap bourbon in the mix.

"It's going to be okay." He patted Dick's shoulder, and he didn't think that Dick could look more fucked-up but his face twisted like Logan had killed his pony. _Watched his brother die. _

Somehow, after Aaron died, Logan could scarcely bear the feeling of another man's hand on his skin. Had wriggled away from Keith's shoulder slaps, and Wallace's high-fives because the strength coiled under their skin made his stomach lurch.

But Dick's eyes were full of tears and Logan pulled his head down against his shoulder. "Come here."

He felt Dick's face hot against his neck, and Dick's chest lie flat against his own, and Dick's hand on his hip. Felt the weight and the heft of Dick and felt, for the first time since Aaron, that he wasn't afraid.

* * *

"So, is there any booze left in the mini-bar?" Dick was perched on the edge of the sofa in Logan's suite.

"I think you've had enough, man."

"There isn't enough in the whole fucking world." The bitterness in Dick's voice made Logan wince.

"Well, that's very _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_ of you, but I think that you need a break."

"And do what?" Dick leaned back against the sofa, and laced his fingers over his stomach. "Like, _feel _stuff."

Logan blinked. "I guess."

Dick nodded, sagely, like Logan was an expert on a talk-show; a sassy PhD with street-smarts.

"So what happens then?" He sounded lost.

"I don't know."

Dick turned his head toward him. "All I can think is that some fucking pervert was finger-banging my brother and I didn't--"

"None of us knew." Logan's voice was firm, and he'd spent so many hours thinking about this. Wondering which of the awkward moments he'd spent with Beaver was supposed to tip him off that he was more broken than the rest of Neptune's sons.

"Yeah, but I was his _brother_."

"Yeah." Logan dropped his head.

"Logan?"

Logan looked up. "What?"

"Did you play Little League?"

Logan shook his head. "Nah, man. I was always all about the surfing. You don't remember?"

Dick shook his head, hair rustling against the leather of the sofa. "I don't remember shit."

"Yeah, well, I never played Little League." And he felt hysterical laughter bubble in his chest, because it was almost funny. Almost like the worst euphemism ever for something that Logan couldn't even imagine.

Dick swallowed, convulsively. "E! said your Dad--"

Logan tried to smile. "Dick, we don't have to walk all the way down Memory Lane tonight, do we? Can't we stop at Lookout Point and neck for a while?"

Dick ignored him. "And you never thought to clue your compadres in?"

In the silence, Logan could hear the squeaky wheel of the room-service cart heading down the corridor.

"So you could do what?" His voice was flat. "Rustle up a posse?"

"I could have--" Dick trailed off.

"What, Dick? What could you have done? What _would_ you have done?" Logan stood up. "He was fucking crazy. He killed Lily. He set Veronica on _fire_."

"Did he--?" Dick choked on the words.

"Did he what?"

Dick looked at him, face swollen. "Like Woody."

Logan shook his head. "No." _He liked his meat a little darker, and wearing a pink bow, _he thought, the image of Lily and Aaron in bed flickering behind his eyelids. But he couldn't say that when Dick looked like his brain was melting inside his skull.

Dick nodded.

Logan sat down. "Woody busted out his Humbert Humbert act with other kids. Their parents didn't know. Their _brothers _didn't know."

"It was the _Beav, _man." Dick's voice cracked, and he tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling. "Can I have a vodka rocks?"

Logan licked his lips. "Sure."

He poured a generous three fingers of Grey Goose into a glass, and the sound of the ice clinking against the side reminded him, for a second, of Lynn.


End file.
